The Official “There’s Something About Mary” (12.21) Live Recap Thread

We need your help!

Starting now with a recap of the LoL and Lucifer’s baby that makes me wish neither had ever happened.

Cut to Now and someone running through the woods. It’s Eileen. She’s being chased by a Hell Hound. It gets her. It’s being sicced on her by Retch, who uses a whistle to control it.

Yeah, I’m sure Crowley will be fine with that.

So, yup, we just lost a popular female character in the friggin’ teaser.

Dean and Sam and in Mary’s motel room, trying to find Mary. Dean calls Retch and Retch lies to him. The Brothers compare notes and figure that out.

Sam gets a call from Jody, saying Eileen’s been killed. In South Carolina. Sam infodumps that this is the second Hunter death they’ve heard about and now Mary is missing.

Cut to the Brothers in the morgue with Eileen’s body. Dean identifies the wounds as Hell Hound, and Eileen was supposed to be in Ireland. Dean says seven Hunters have been killed in almost as many weeks. What’s going on?

Cut to Crowley berating a demon minion about not finding Kelly. More infodumping. [sigh]

Cut to “Mary” surprising a Hunter. Of course she’s got to be a shapeshifter.

Or…it’s Mary. She wakes up and Toni the Twat enters. The Twat starts monologuing about how she’s brainwashing Mary and tells Mary some home truths about John.

More delusional stupidity from the Twat about the LoL’s foolish, utterly doomed attempt to control all of the United States. It’s not even possible.

Cut to Henchbithstress being visited by Crowley. He tells her he knows about her plan. He was the one who gave Retch his Hell Hound. Crowley warns her she needs to have the same deal with him that she does in the UK. She actually thinks she can lecture Crowley about how he should stand by while she goes after the Brothers.

So…she’s hellbound and is too stupid to know it.

Cut to some demon trying to help Lucifer, or something.

Crowley is trying to make a deal with Lucifer over the hellspawn to get Lucifer to kill Henchbitchstress for her.

Mary is dragged back from another session.

Twat comes in to report and is displeased when Retch disses her. Twat calls him a psychopath, which is hilarious, considering what she is.

Henchbitchstress does some more infodumping about knowing Retch’s sexual history and acting as though the Hunters in the U.S. are already dead. God, she’s a fool.

Dean gets a letter from Eileen. She says in it that she knew they were watching her and asked if she could come to the Bunker.

At the Bunker, the Brothers proceed to look everywhere but the obvious place under the main table for the Big Honking Bug. Eventually, Dean finds it and signals to Sam.

‘Scuse me, it’s raining cats here.

So, Dean quickly comes up with a plan to trap the LoL by having a conversation with Sam about meeting another Hunter in a lonely spot.

Cut to Retch and Twat having a conversation in which both are in denial about their psychopathy. Twat is convinced she can take down the American Hunters because she’s been studying them for years. Idiot. These people are such morons.

Retch gets a call about Mary asking for him. Twat gets the call about the “meeting.” Neither realizes it’s a trap.

Mary acts all confused. I am not fooled, but Retch is. Despite his denial, she’s doing a pretty good job of seducing him. She’s got his number and he doesn’t even know it. She gets his gun and tries to shoot herself. When he gets the gun from her, she asks him to shoot her.

Retch responds in a brainwashed sort of way and leaves.

Mary cries and we are seriously supposed to believe she’s broken. That right there says so much about this pair of writers’ misogyny.

Meanwhile, the stupid Twat goes to the meet. She has just enough motherwit to send in two goons, but of course she doesn’t keep an eye on them. The Brothers trap them easily. When Twat gets her gun out, she’s captured, though not without, first, yet another “Dean gets his ass kicked by a girl” moment (even though the actress can’t stagefight her way out of a wet paper bag). They don’t even punch her. She needs to be beaten severely.

So, Crowley comes in to do some more gloating and Lucifer turns the puppet tables on him.

In the car, the Twat proceeds to monologue smugly because of course, that’s what someone does when they have a gun pointed at them. THIS BITCH NEEDS TO DIE.

So, the Twat is completely dumb enough to admit that Mick is dead and her entire stupid plan. And I have no idea why Sam doesn’t let Dean beat her. Dean is a master torturer, after all.

So, Crowley is getting his ass kicked by Lucifer – again. Lucifer is showing his wings.

The Brothers get back to the Bunker and are ambushed, but they get the drop on everyone, including Ketch. But Mary turns the tables because she’s brainwashed now. Or something. So much hate.

So, the Brother are being disarmed…and I just lost signal because of a thunderstorm. Not. Happy.

So, we’re back to Crowley’s host being dragged out, while a suspicious mouse follows it.

We have an end scene of Retch and Mary driving in the Impala, supposedly victorious. Oh, wait, the last scene is of Lucifer. And of course, that got cut off by the rain, too. Fuck you very much, Dish. Also, fuck you very much, show. This has got to be the most unnecessary cliffhanger you’ve ever done. Ran out of ideas, did you, Dabb?

So, on top of the shit sandwich that was this episode (who the hell hired the actress who plays Toni Bevell? She’s terrible!), I couldn’t even watch the end because of a thunderstorm. I’ll get it a few hours from now, but still.

Well, they only gave them 10 episodes for a ‘summer series’ so maybe they had a ‘hole’ in the schedule they needed to fill.

I think they made Rittenhouse too powerful at the end (Mama KNEW she had cancer in the original timeline and the whole thing seems to have been set up in part to HEAL her cancer!) but I will be happy to watch them fall (I loved the Bad Dad being arrested at the end of the last episode).

It seems the production company offered the network extra money. It also sounds as though the network had a re-think on how many of their new pilots they liked/could afford. There have always been bts reasons for renewals, but as live ratings have plummeted, these more obscure reasons that have to be ferreted out by inference have increased in importance, making renewals appear more random and arbitrary.

The witch/headmistress might interest me a bit more if there was some back story or motivation for her actions. Maybe some witch from the grand coven infiltrating the MOL ranks and corrupting their members from within as revenge. Or some experience which biased her against monsters, so she had a reason to want them gone. As it is, she seems not so much to be eliminating monsters as weaponizing them for more power. As things stand, there is no reason for her evil. One might exhibit goodness for its own sake, but evil needs a motive.

And the other members are intended to come off as brainwashed themselves. In my observation, indoctrination works best if the person or persons doing the brainwashing on some level believes themselves, and can sell the idea that what they are doing either benefits the individual being indoctrinated, or is serving the common good. Which the headmistress does not. There is no sense that Ketch or Toni really buy either of these things. And calling the other a psychopath was a true pot/kettle moment. I forget who said it to whom.

Incidentally, I had a boss who used the “everyone is expendable” line with me, and that does not motivate one to remain a member of an organization. Of course, they might be afraid, but Ketch does not appear to have much to live for anyway, and he could probably find work as a contract killer in a situation that provides more personal freedom. Toni might have a legitimate fear for her son’s safety, but I would think that concern for her child might also motivate her to try to extricate herself, especially since she appears to have outside resources. And what did she plan on doing with her son as he gets older. The MOL is extremely hereditary. Did she plan on sending him to that horrible school? Even bringing a child into the world in a situation like that seems highly morally questionable.

Sorry about the rant. When I work a night shift I have too much time to think.

I agree with everything you say except I don’t see the lol loyalty as brainwashing. They have been brought up to serve the organization and follow its rules. There training and upbringing was psychologically abusive and damaging however it was not brainwashing. It’s a mirror for the way the Winchesters were raised by John as well as the way the British and American upper classes raise their children.

The entire boarding school system seems cruel to me. It rewards children that play by the rules and enables those children to punish the rule breakers or those scene weak or different as they see fit.

Of course the lol have been written as a ludicrous Battle Royale version of the elite boarding schools.
I did my graduate studies at New York University. Most students accepted had ivy league degrees. I didn’t. They were absolutely cut throat in their desire to succeed and be the best by any means necessary. This state University undergraduate was shocked by their dearth of morals and utter lack of a sense of collegiality.

So there is some meat to Dabb’s lol concept but it becomes very laughable by the bad writing, plotting and world building.

Toni was not lying about the Winchesters upbringing. We know that John became unstable after Mary’s death and the Winchesters like many hunters were raised off the grid. The comparison for the American hunting community are the independent militia who have tons of weapons, their own code, believe they are carrying on a fight against a hidden enemy and are staunchly against anyone telling them what to do.

Good writing would have mined the natural distrust and culture clash of the two groups. Instead Dabb literally introduces them as comic book Spectrasonics style bad guys. Letch is an evil Mr. Steed stereotype. It could have been believable world building. Instead it is just unbelievable dreck.

Unlike Mary the lol have free will. Toni chose to shot Sam and torture him for information on American hunters. And she chose to kill Dean knowing that he would never comply or because she was afraid of him.
Mick chose to use diplomacy to ensure cooperation. Letch just enjoys killing and the organization and his colleagues choose to look the other way over his psychopathic tendencies because he is efficient at the job.

Toni calls Letch a psychopath by the way. She also did this in the premiere. As does Dean more or less in words and actions. The fact that Mary willingly works with him and sees him as a partner tells us that Letch chose to keep his true self hidden from her because he wants Mary to like him. He is very tender with her in fact in stark contrast to Toni’s brutal and brusque manner. He also chose to betray Toni because he knows that is how to succeed in lol business.

The Winchesters also had free will once they became men and we’re no longer under John’s direction. We have watched them and The Family Business evolve in their approach to hunting. Now daving people often happens at the expense of hunting things. This is their main fault according to the lol andnLetch for whom the kill count is the main objective. For the Winchesters, the heroes of this story, saving people is winning and they (Dean) are so good at their (his) job that they (he) can count on the help of demons,
vampires and ghosts to get the job done.

The plotline has compelling bones and might have been great in the hands of a better show runners and much better writing. This season sadly sucks bigly and is so not tremendous.

The thing for which Mary really needs redeeming is her initial deal with a demon that set all this chaos in motion. I know she was only 19 at the time, and who thinks much of consequences at that age. But it has taken 21 episodes to get any kind of admission of the effect that decision had on her sons or her husband, and that came from Toni. Ridding the world of monsters or making some noble sacrifice isn’t nearly meaningful as simple acknowledgement of this.

Mary name dropped it in the first episode and it is the subtext driving her to want to rid the world of monsters so her boys don’t have to hunt… and the reason she is avoiding her sons. And yes Toni uses it to inflict pain.

I don’t have much faith in the writers to make a satisfying redemption. The perennial Winchester need for redemption drives their every single misguided action. Rarely is their a satisfying pay-off per the writing although Jensen’s acting can make up for almost any poorly conceived scene or plotline.

Wow, just wow. I have never been someone who liked to cry misogyny too often, but when every single female character is either fridged, useless or evil, it’s kind of hard to deny.

How convenient for Lucifer that spells of imprisonment can just reverse themselves like that, with no warning, effort or planning.

I hope Crowley was able to somehow escape inot the body of that rat.

The reveal that the headmistress had a deal with Crowley was somehow no reveal at all, though I guess it did clear up the plot hole of how Bella sold her soul when England was supposedly monster free. I wonder if last week’s entry of the witch controlling her puppets was supposed to be some sort of foreshadowing of this. Because the headmistress is really just a witch herself.

As far as Toni disarming Dean, I am clinging to the notion that it was part of a plan to let her think she’d gotten the drop on him to distract her from Sam coming to capture her. It’s all I’ve got.

I really hope they don’t force them to choose between Jody and their Mom next week.

The LoL morality or ethos or what-have-you makes no sense whatsoever at this point. They spout all this nonsense about being morally superior, then turn around and do exactly what they accuse the Brothers of doing. It would be one thing if they just didn’t care (why the Thule would have worked much better, and the Stynes weren’t half as annoying, in this role), but they actually believe they are morally superior while being total hypocrites, knowing full-well they’re hypocrites, and being totally okay with that. They make no sense.

It’s a given Crowley escaped in the rat. It’s perfectly okay for Crowley to participate in the fridging of yet another guest female character, but God forbid we kill him off when that might actually up the story stakes for real.

Toni shouldn’t have been able to disarm Dean, period. The actress’ stage-fighting skills (not to mention the ridiculous wardrobe they gave her) are simply not up to making that work.

I hear you about the misogyny. Unfortunately, the usual debate in the fandom is very either/or. Either they’re in complete denial about any sexism or misogyny on the show or they act as though it’s the Worst Show Evah for sexism and misogyny.

The reality is that it’s somewhere in between. Supernatural actually makes a concerted effort to be diverse. Not only has it been doing so since a lot of shows held up as pioneers of diversity even existed, but it usually does it better (The Vampire Diaries, Grimm, Sleepy Hollow, The Walking Dead, lookin’ at you).

But that doesn’t mean Supernatural always gets it right, or that it doesn’t have problematical writers and writing. The Nepotism Duo are consistently horrible in this area and personally, I always had reservations about Dabb becoming showrunner due to his own inclination toward comic-book-inspired sexism. He hasn’t exactly risen above my expectations.

Last night was a signal example. We have the writers talking out one side of their mouths about how fans just have to accept female characters, however poorly written or introduced, or we’re misogynists. Out the other side, we get a popular female character fridged unceremoniously in an episode’s teaser, while a very unpopular female character continues to live and even triumph to a certain extent, many of her sins glossed over. And yet, after all that pushing and attempted emotional blackmail, the writers themselves have a character in-show refer to this latter female character as a “bitch.” It’s hypocritical to the extreme and Ruby Syndrome all over again.

The sad thing is that our most misogynistic showrunner, Sera Gamble, was a woman.

Actually, show history indicates that Dean trying to save Mary is the A story. It’s cheaper and easier to write and produce, and involves two leads, so it should get more screentime and attention a la Sam’s dream story in “The Man Who Knew Too Much” or “I Think I’m Gonna Like It Here.”

Truth. Dean and May are interesting because they have an established back story which is creating tension between about expectations that each have regarding the other.
It still feels like a blatant rehash of Pac-Man Fever. Jensen and Samantha will act the hell put of it.

Crowley is alive. They had Lucy do the cheek cut which showed a red glow to contrast with the death stroke which has no red glow of demon essence.
And yes he is in the mouse/rat.
He transferred himself into an available furry creature much as the demon in Fallen did to escape death. Crowley probably did this using witchcraft since there was no smoke. And in fact we see a mouse scurry after his body ergo he lives. Next stop the bunker methinks.

Many many eyerolsl last niget.
Yes all of the lol are conditioned/damaged to some degree however Letch and Toni are making their own decisions. There’s a,difference between their dog eat dog Battle Royale mentality and brainwashing as is being done to Mary.

I thought last week’s manipulated wicker men mirrored Castiel and what’s her names situation in that the nephilfetus has essentially possessed them. Manchurean Mary is similar albeit drug induced/psychological.

Nothing is a OMG reveal with Dabb. He is write by numbers and oh so wrong. Snore. Black. Meh.

Considering what happened in 2016 I think we all haven’t been crying misogyny enough.
I will never get over the treatment of Hillary, the sheer unmitigated hatred of a strong smart capable woman with actual ideas and a plan. And I most certainly will never get over the fact that almost half of the country voted for an orange blob of stupidity, greed and bigotry because they believed he was better than her. Simply put it means,that absolutely any white guy is better than the most accomplished woman.

I agree. I do not feel as upset about Sam getting the kill, catching Toni (for instance) because it is part of a ‘team’ effort. Sam went to one window, she shot, Dean BROKE the driver-side window, then got her out in the open, she punched him in the nuts and then SAM had a gun to her head.

My husband is ex-military and he thinks ‘who gets the kill’ is a dumb argument because they are a team. I see what ‘you all’ are saying but I also see what ‘he’ is saying. They are such a ‘good’ team they don’t even have to discuss what they are going to do.

I know we disagree here. (I would pick Jody over Mom any week. SHE is raising two young women who have had problematic pasts.) BUT I am ‘so’ pumped for every one of those BMOL people to die. I remember the two tech people from The Raid who were largely inoffensive but from THIS episode it seems that every one of the graduate of Hogwarts had to kill somebody to matriculate. So those two ‘inoffensive’ ‘kids’ were also murderers. Kill them all. I’ll have out a bottle of Kriek next week and I will drink to each one of their deaths.

My problem is not with who gets the kill. My problem is three-fold–1. Sam is not written in such a way that the show makes it believable he can get those kills. Whatever one can say about Jared Padalecki’s acting, he can sell what the writing wants him to sell when the writing is there. For example, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say they didn’t buy that Sam had superpowers during the demon blood plot. Sure, there were jokes about Sam’s Jazz Hand of Ipecac, but people believed what the narrative said–that Sam was capable of using superpowers to kill high-level demons like Alastair and Lilith.

There was nothing believable about Sam’s kills this season. And while it’s cool he finally got the drop on the Twat, the fact it took Dean getting improbably beaten up by a “girly” girl to get Sam into that position diminished the satisfaction of the moment. Sam is quite capable of taking the Twat down on his own. She’s not all that, no matter how hard the writers tried to sell her that way.

2. Which brings us to Toni and her (lack of) fighting skills. She doesn’t have any. The show desperately wanted us to believe she has some, then cast an actress with no appreciable talent in the area of stage-fighting ability and dressed her in the tightest and most impractical garb for doing any fighting. She’d have more freedom of movement barefoot in a chain bikini than teetering on those heels in those tight trousers. Granted, I totally bought Caity Lotz kicking ass in 17th century dresses at the beginning of LoT last season, but this actress is no Caity Lotz, either in the ability to stage-fight or projecting any presence that is remotely intimidating.

3. This is Dean we’re talking about. You know, the guy who can take down three demons even without superpowers and who frequently *does* have superpowers on top of that. And that kick to the crotch was intentionally humiliating in a metatextual way. It sends a message that Dean got schooled because he was being handsy with a girl, which is insulting both to Dean and to female fans. Dean wasn’t trying to besmirch the Twat’s nonexistent virtue (she slept with Ketch to get ahead, for Christ’s sake!). He was trying to capture an enemy agent who had brainwashed his mother, tortured his brother, and participated (gleefully, if second-hand) in the murder of a close friend. And two of those characters were female. I don’t quite know what the Nepotism Duo thought they were trying to get across, but I’m not interested in what they’re selling if the intended message is that it was okay for her to live because she’s just a tough woman trying to do her job when she’s actually worse to women than to men.

It doesn’t sound as though they would have bothered, but they do seem to have been perfectly okay with a little girl getting possessed and tricking another little girl into selling her soul, on their watch.

I won’t see this episode until it airs over here in a couple of weeks, but I am so annoyed about Eileen. I was delighted to hear that she was back, but to not have her make it past the teaser is just the latest disappointment in a season full of them. The sooner the BMoL pack up their tent & go home, never to be heard of again, the better. Oh, and they can take Lucifer and his spawn with them too.

Yeah, I always thought the MoL could be good antagonists, but the way they were written this season, I never want to hear from them again. The best thing about Lucifer and his spawn (and that’s pretty awful, too) is that at least we now have a mechanism for salting and burning the entire LoL storyline.

I so agree. And I like it when Crowley finds a reason to work with Dean. We know he is TFW or Team Deanas it should be known because he risked his life to save them by trying to negotiate with Ramiel.
No surprises with Dabbled.

If for instance their issue with the Winchesters was simply that they crossed the line too much by using the supernatural for personal gain and by cutting their supernatural cohorts slack when they should be killing them; then their superiority complex would make sense
Instead they are a patently evil organization of psychopathic snobs that kills,with impunity and uses supernatural means to do so, held together by a literally cut-throat corporate organizational structure. Essentially they are Crowley’s version of hell… on earth… without Crowley.
The Thule would have been more interesting because of the Nazi back story,and their sheer relish mentioned if the occult aND their own psychopaths.
The Stynes would have been more interesting because the bones of their story lay in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein mythos, and the basic premise of the family leaving Europe to escape the stigma of their forebearer’s evil scientific experiments only to become some southern Gothic offshoot that uses that science for personal gain.
Again, it could have been interesting if….
Yawn.

I disagree that making the audience hate you is good acting. There are plenty of awful actors that play very unpopular characters. The trick is to play the character in a way where the audience hates you, but wants to see what happens next (kind of like Retch). With Toni, I just want to turn the channel.

I just had a ‘vision’ of Letch siccing a hellhound on the American Hunters and Dean says, get the civvies out of here, Sam (meaning everybody else) and Dean does the one dog-fighting move that I have read that works: Dean sticks his LEFT arm down the hellhound’s mouth (so he can’t close his mouth) while Dean starts stabbing him with the Kurdish demon blade. Dean kills the hellhound but is seriously wounded. (I would expect Castiel to heal him in my scenario.)

I thought maybe that too, although I couldn’t figure out how. Demons possessing animals is quite biblical, but we would have seen him smoke out. Shapeshifting via witchcraft makes sense. He could have have had it planned in advance as a potential escape plan if he knew the spell imprisoning Lucifer could reverse itself.

He transferred himself into an available furry creature much as the demon in Fallen did to escape death. Crowley probably did this using witchcraft since there was no smoke. And in fact we see a mouse scurry after his body ergo he lives. Next stop the bunker methinks.